Abstract: Diagnosing nasopharyngeal carcinoma in its early stage plays an important role in the treatment of this disease. We have developed a teleconsultation system to assist rural clinician diagnose the carcinoma under the help of radiologist at metropolitan hospital. In November 1996, we put the system into clinical environment for trial. The purpose is, from the radiologist and physician's points of view, to compare our teleconsultation system to the traditional travel-based consultation. Two hospitals were involved in the trial. We deployed a teleconsultation expert center (TEC) and remote clinician's workstation connected to TEC through publish telephone networks. Three radiologists and one clinician were involved in the three-week trial collecting 35 cases. For each case in our trial, two kinds of consultation were performed: the teleconsultation and then the travel-based one. We, for both ways of consultation, (1) collected all pairs of reports, (2) calculated financial expenditure, and (3) recorded time involved. We also asked the professionals involved for their impression of the system. Data collected from the evaluation has indicated a sanguine feature for diagnosing nasopharyngeal carcinoma using teleconsultation system: the diagnosis accuracy is excellent, the cost and the consultation delay were significantly reduced. !5
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